Kerry Condon – Rating Frames

F1 preview screening provided by Universal Pictures

Swapping the skies for the circuit, Joseph Kosinski’s F1 (2025) is a speedy, four wheeled follow up to his box office smash, Top Gun: Maverick (2022). While I’m not an F1 fanatic, there’s no doubt that the exhilaration of a race with cars that push past 300km/h is an adrenaline rush for those that love that sport, and especially for the drivers behind the wheel. But what happens when you peel back the veneer that is the glitz and glamour of podium finishes, and begin to look at the gruelling process that pit crews and drivers alike go through in the lead up to a race? Well, Kosiniski understood the assignment and has created a punchy drama that both tackles that question, and is rife with everything from technical language about racing, to the fall and rise of a prodigy.

In many ways, F1 feels like a spiritual successor to Maverick in that it traces the life of someone who was young and reckless, but is now more of a “has been” who is giving it one last crack against the new stars. On paper, Kosiniski’s film feels like it was very much geared towards casting Tom Cruise and continuing to put him in the cockpit of these lightning fast death machines, but with the Mission Impossible films taking up the majority of his focus, another aging yet still youthful star had to step in.

Cue Brad Pitt. Once you’ve seen this film, it’s easy to say that it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing this role other than Pitt, but Pitt makes the character of Sonny Hayes wholly his own that it’s really, truly impossible to imagine even Cruise in his position. There’s a boyish cockiness that Pitt translates so well to the screen, and it’s no different here as he carries himself with the same reckless edge he’s delivered time and time again. And it serves the premise perfectly: a former racing prodigy who is living in his van and sporadically competing in races is given the keys to the kingdom that is F1 by his former racing competitor-friend-turned-F1-owner, as a hail mary to pull them out of the rut they’re in.

You might be thinking: this sounds like every movie that has an ageing star who continues to try and compete at the highest level. While you might be right to a degree, on paper F1 isn’t remarkable as a fresh character study, but where it falters in storytelling it makes up for with fast paced action and a desire to authentically capture the F1 scene. Kosinski and frequent cinematographer Claudio Miranda’s work on getting the claustrophobic, tight spacing of fighter jets right in Maverick has helped them capture the same feeling of being in an F1 car; combine that with Hans Zimmer’s pulsating, punchy score, and the film has a video game simulator feel — keeping you at once on the edge of your seat and as though you’re there with Sonny.

Key to trying to give the film a little more egde beyond the generic script by Ehren Kruger is the addition of a young rookie, Josh Pearce (Damson Idris), who naturally takes the lead for the team, with Sonny serving more to amplify his movements on the track. Their dynamic helps shift the gears and keep the film from just being like every other racing film you may have seen. For one, Sonny doesn’t settle for second best and pushes Josh to be his competitor on the track so as to not have him be complacent and expecting everything will be handed to him. This push and pull between the two is like a passing of a baton but only if that baton was on a rope and it had to be caught first.

That’s all to say that F1, while a stellar showcase of zippy cinematography and snappy editing, derives its most heartfelt moments (even if the rest of the story is rather cookie-cutter) through Sonny’s redemption arc as he takes his track knowledge and turns it into a method for madness. What’s even more impressive is just how close to the real thing Kosinski has kept proceedings, with real-life racers like Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton cropping up (the latter being a producer as well who was involved with the project before Brad Pitt!). There’s a level of verisimilitude that the film is striving to capture, sometimes to the detriment of the wider drama that’s captured so well by films like Ferrari (2023) and Ford v Ferrari (2019), but often it nails this approach mainly because of how close each aspect of production is to the real thing, and with this approach Kosinski has clearly found himself a formula for success.

F1 opens nationally from the June 26.

A densely compacted tragic fable on friendship, breakups, art, passions, and how one spends one’s life, Banshees of Inisherin is one of the year’s most rewarding films, with a collection of brilliant performances by Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, and Barry Keoghan amplifying an extraordinary script by Oscar winning filmmaker Martin McDonagh.

At the tail end of the Irish Civil War in 1923, on the outskirts of the conflict sits the fictitious isle of Inisherin, a quiet town that feels universal in both place and time. The conversations and bickering being had on Inisherin could be happening in the 1920s, 1820s, or even today. Revered playwright turned filmmaker Martin Mcdonagh often plays with the idea of places as a form of purgatory for his characters, with Inisherin being no exception.

Reuniting after 14 years, Mcdonagh, Farrell, and Gleeson echo their masterpiece In Bruges (2008) throughout Banshees, making for a perfect double feature. Gleeson plays Colm, a folk musician in Inisherin who decides, for unclear reasons, to abruptly ignore and reject his long-time friend Pádraic, played by Farrell. He tells Pádraic he finds him dull and would rather spend the rest of his days composing music, wanting to leave behind a legacy rather than drink at the pub and listen to idle conversation. The actors seem to mirror the disposition of the other in these two films, with Farrell turning from a vessel of guilt to a sweetheart, and Gleeson from a kind and endearing soul to a self-absorbed and increasingly cruel man.

The setup is simple with the characters devolving as Pádraic’s desire to understand and rekindle this relationship with his closest friend persists. As Pádraic continues in his endeavour, Colm’s threats towards him to be left alone grow more and more extreme, leading to truly shocking places.

Brendan Gleeson (left) and Colin Farrell in *The Banshees of Inisherin*

What allows Banshees to thrive is its ability to entertain throughout as a film of friendship, art, and finding meaning in one’s life, as well as operating at an incredibly high level of thematic and political resonance. McDonagh has grown exponentially as a visual storyteller, allowing his sharp pen to relax and to allow the other aspects of cinema to communicate his themes and ideas in deeply rewarding ways.

A series of thematic ties to Colm and Van Gogh plays both into the conflict the musician is feeling about his life and his work, and his desire to emit a legacy in a town that is absent of one. Gleeson gives a nuanced and subtle performance that should hopefully be rewarded in the awards season, exuding pathos and despair in a world he finds incredibly meaningless. In an interview with GQ, production designer Mark Tildesley describes Colm’s home like a Van Gogh painting;

“When you get into Colm’s house, the inside is almost like a Van Gogh painting. It’s yellow, bright. It has a red floor, which is an old oilskin from sailcloth, and a black ceiling, [which] are strong colours for a period film.”
Hannah Strong, GQ

These striking visual choices and the obvious allusion to Van Gogh’s ear with Colm’s threat of mutilation further cement the comparison between artists. The genius of this thematic connection is in how the filmmakers create the ties through the character Colm’s own choices, not their own. The sadness of the Colm story is his desperate need to have his work evaluated and celebrated, something we are never actually shown. We never hear his completed works so his projected idea of himself as this tortured artist is never redeemed for us as the audience, allowing only the pathos and cruelty of his decisions to fester throughout. What allows the very best character-led dramas to succeed is in creating a world that is believably crafted by its characters, something Banshees achieves superbly.

Brendan Gleeson (right) and Colin Farrell in *The Banshees of Inisherin*

The war of friends is a microcosm of the civil war taking place on its fringes in heartbreaking ways. There are better places to learn of the Irish civil war, but in essence, it was an internal struggle between the Irish about the ownership of land by the British, occurring shortly after the Irish War of Independence that created the free state. Viewing Colm and Pádraic’s falling out between brothers, devolving into increasing brutality (both to their land and personhood) in this historical sense allows the weight of this quirky comedy to ascend to greater heights. The heartbreak at the conclusion of the film is further extended with the knowledge of the troubles to come.

But to call The Banshees of Inisherin a political film about the Irish Civil War would be to reduce the breadth of ideas McDonagh is working with here. Complicated characters working against each other and their place in the world for seemingly asinine reasons, inside a deeply enjoyable and melancholic comedy, is the work of a master writer at the top of his game.

Banshees is a brilliant balancing act that consistently grounds itself in its characters, never allowing its more ethereal themes to float away into wistful abstraction. McDonagh is at the top of his game both as a writer and filmmaker here, allowing the non dialogue heavy moments to shine as much as the musicality of his feckin’ barbs to create one of the year’s best films.

The Banshees of Inisherin is in select theatres from Boxing Day.

Tag: Kerry Condon

F1: Brad Pitt Plays a Past-His-Prime Prodigy in Joseph Kosinski’s Adrenaline Filled Follow-Up to Top Gun: Maverick

The Banshees of Inisherin is a Feckin’ Good Time